Why Must Mother Nature Knock Down A Tree Every Place We Live?

A major storm came through our town last night.  While it was coming through, we were actually at aerial class in Charlotte.  There were a couple of downpours and one power blip, but nothing real serious.

Crews working on the down power lines in town.  It will probably take a few days to get all of them.

On the way home, I received a text from a coworker asking if we'd survived the storm unscathed.  That worried us, a bit.  But it was also hard to imagine a storm that had seemed fairly benign only 30 miles away causing major damage.  So we were relatively surprised to find a tree across our driveway when we got home (kind of hard to miss it this time).  Fortunately, our handyman was out with his son & grandson and a couple of chainsaws and had it out of our driveway not long after we got home.

Our driveway, thankfully for a very short time last night.

Although I've heard some rumors of a funnel cloud, it was mainly the 60-80 mph winds that did the damage.  Trees were down everywhere...and the likelihood that the they fell seemed to be directly related to the things in their path.  They fell on houses, cars, lots and lots of power poles.  For some reason, our town was the hardest hit in the area.

Damage to a nearby house where a large tree fell on it.

We cooked dinner by candlelight and then dressed by flashlight in the morning.  Of course the power was on at work (usually is) but it was kind of a ghost town there today.  The commute in was a little dangerous due to people not respecting the four-way stop rule at traffic lights without power.  I had to retake the written driver's license test when we moved down here, maybe some of these boneheads should be required to as well...